


Alone in the Dark

by the_random_writer



Category: Cut & Run - Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux
Genre: Angst, Cats, Dinosaurs, Dreams, Fluff, M/M, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 01:26:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6264049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_random_writer/pseuds/the_random_writer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ty's dreams prove to be disturbing, in more ways than one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alone in the Dark

Zane slid his hand slowly across the mattress, expecting to encounter the solid, comforting warmth of his husband's slumbering body. But his hand found only an empty space. Ty was gone, and judging by the temperature of the sheets on the other side of the bed, it wasn't a recent departure.

He lifted his head, looked around as well as he could in the gloomy room, then listened carefully for the sound of someone using the bathroom along the hall. He heard nothing except the quiet ticking of Ty's watch, which was lying where he'd left it on top of the chest of drawers.

He told himself there was no immediate cause for concern. For all that Ty could fall asleep almost at a moment's notice (a talent he'd developed while serving in the Marines), he sometimes had trouble dropping off, either because of a busy mind or a furious case of restless legs. He normally tried to ride it out (and weren't _those_ nights entertaining), but sometimes it was so bad, he had no choice but to get out of bed and potter around the house until whatever body part was causing the problem decided it was time to sleep.

Zane threw the covers back and swung his feet onto the floor. He heard a loud but muffled feline complaint and realized he'd accidentally buried Jiminy under the fold of the quilt. He pulled the covers back into place and gave the disgruntled cat an apologetic scratch on the head. He noticed then that Cricket was also nowhere to be seen. That in itself was an extremely reassuring sign. Only one thing could have persuaded her to abandon her brother (not to mention the warmth of the bed), and that was the prospect of abandoning Ty. Wherever Ty went in the house, Cricket almost always immediately followed, like a tiny, fluffy, feline shadow.

Zane stepped into the narrow hall, then like a ranger on a magical quest, stopped to consider his next move. If he was Ty, where would he go? Up to the balcony on the second floor, or down to the living room on the main level? He listened carefully, but still heard nothing to give him a clue either way. Not that the silence really meant anything. Ty could be creeping up on him right now, dressed from head to toe in full Marine woodland camo, and he probably wouldn't have a clue. He had literally married the world's sneakiest man.

He turned to go up, then reminded himself it was four o'clock on a snowy December morning. So unless Ty had woken up with a problem that could only be solved by sitting out in the freezing cold, the balcony was not an obvious choice. He ambled quietly down the stairs, and sure enough, there was Ty, sitting on the living room couch with Cricket curled up in a ball on his lap. But the living room was totally dark, except for the moonlight streaming in through the kitchen window. That was enough to set his alarm bells ringing.

"Hey, doll," he called out softly as he padded across to the couch. "Missed you upstairs. Everything okay?"

Ty looked up as he approached and gave him a wan smile. "Couldn't sleep."

"Figured that. What's giving you grief tonight? Legs or brain?"

Ty shook his head slightly. "Neither. Had a bad dream."

Zane laid a comforting hand on his husband's shoulder, then stepped around him to perch on the broad arm of the leather chair.

"Must have been a pretty horrible dream for you to end up sitting down here by yourself in the dark," he pointed out.

"Yeah."

Zane's brows drew down as he reflected on the lack of information in Ty's responses. It wasn't like his other half to be so terse and reserved.

"You wanna talk about it? Problem shared, problem halved?"

Ty blew out a frustrated sigh. "Dunno, Zane. Might just make things worse. End up with a problem doubled instead."

Zane's innards churned slightly. What problem could be so bad that sharing it would make it worse instead of better? And a problem from a _dream_ , at that?

"Ty, do you remember what you said to me when we got married?"

A smile blossomed across Ty's face as a warmer, happier memory pushed his troubled thoughts aside.

"I promised to never leave you alone in the dark," he whispered.

"So let me do the same for you now," Zane pleaded quietly. "Tell me what the dream was about. Let me help."

Ty frowned and made an ambiguous noise halfway between a sigh and a grunt, obviously still reluctant to broach the troubling subject at hand.

"It was about Becky," he eventually revealed.

Zane's stomach lurched to the back of his throat.

" _Becky_?" he echoed incredulously.

"Yeah."

Jesus. No wonder Ty had been so reluctant to talk. That made absolutely no fucking sense at all. Becky had been _his_ wife, not Ty's. She and Ty had only met each other once, back in that bar in New Orleans. And they hadn't exactly been formally introduced. Was that single, brief encounter really enough for Ty to bring her into one of his dreams?

"Or about a woman my brain persuaded me was Becky," Ty said, apparently adding mind-reading to his impressive list of skills. "If that even makes sense."

Zane nodded. "Yeah, kinda."

"I dreamed we were here in the house," Ty explained, "and there was a knock at the front door. You got up to answer it, and Becky was on the step. She said there had been a terrible mistake, that everyone had lied to you, that she hadn't died in a car crash after all. She said she still loved you, and had come to take you home." Ty paused and rubbed nervously at the back of his neck. "She said you had to choose between going home with her, or staying here with me."

Zane took a deep breath and slid from his comfortable perch into the seat of the chair. He'd had his share of disturbing dreams in the years after Becky's death; dreams containing every emotional and mental horror a grieving, guilty mind could produce. The worst of them had literally driven him to drink. But none of them had ever played a trick as cruel as what his husband had just described. No wonder Ty had come downstairs to sit by himself in the dark. Zane was slightly surprised he wasn't also throwing back a beer.

And there was just no _need_ for a dream like that, a fact which Ty knew as well as him. Since the events in Miami in March, they'd both made peace with various troubles from the past. Ty no longer thought of Becky as an absent rival for his husband's affections, but as the woman who'd started the process of making that husband into the man he now loved. He'd only met her once, and very briefly at that, but he appreciated what she'd done to put the two of them on their fateful path.

"I can see why that would bother you, but you know it's never gonna happen," Zane said, choosing his words carefully for his own benefit as much as Ty's. "Becky is dead. I wasn't there when she passed, but I saw her body in the morgue, and I watched them lower her into the ground. I was married to her for ten years, and I loved her then just as much as I love you now. But she's gone, Ty, and she's never coming back. I'm never going to have to face that choice."

Ty nodded and heaved another weary sigh. "I know that, Zane. And it's not what happened in the dream that bothered me so much. It's just..." he trailed off, struggling to put his thoughts into words.

But Zane could see exactly where those thoughts were going. "You're worried something is going to persuade me to leave you."

Another nod. "Or someone."

Zane ran his fingers through his hair, exhaling slowly.

"Ty, I honestly have no idea what the future holds for either of us," he said quietly. "I'm personally hoping it'll hold more books and fewer bullets."

Ty snorted derisively but said nothing.

"But I can tell you right now," Zane went on, "there is no person in this world, either living or dead, who could ever persuade me to give you up."

"I know that, Lone Star," Ty assured him. "Or at least, the rational part of me knows that."

The corner of Zane's mouth tucked up. Who knew Ty even _had_ a rational part?

"What about the irrational part?" was what he actually asked. "What's it doing right now?"

Ty huffed and rubbed his neck again.

"It's having the mother of all anxiety attacks and trying to climb the catastrophe ladder at full speed," he explained bashfully.

Zane nodded in understanding.

"So you started out having a horrible dream where my wife comes back from the dead, making all kinds of emotional demands, and before you know it, your brain has persuaded you that means I'm gonna wake up and tell you I'm running off with the mailman," he said.

Ty squirmed slightly in his seat. "Something like that, yeah," he admitted.

This time it was Zane's turn to blow out an impatient sigh.

"Silly boy," he scolded, but there was no censure in his voice. Only sympathy, support, patience and love.

"You married me, Lone Star," Ty shot back. "If I'm silly, what the hell does that make you?"

Zane smiled and gave a casual shrug. It probably made him dumb enough to need watered twice a week, but he wasn't going to say that out loud.

Then he realized he'd forgotten something.

"So how did it end?"

"How did what end?" Ty repeated, looking confused.

"The dream," Zane clarified. "You said Becky told me I had to choose between going with her or staying with you."

"Yeah?"

"So who did I choose?" he asked, not entirely sure he even wanted to hear the reply.

Ty cleared his throat and squirmed again. "Well, it kinda got _really_ weird after that."

Ding, ding, ding, the alarm bells said.

"Jesus Christ, Ty," Zane blurted. "Please tell me it didn't end with the three of us—"

"No," Ty exclaimed, a look of horror on his face. "Not weird like _that_."

Zane's shoulders slumped in relief. Thank fuck. That might have been on the table back at La Fée Verte, but they'd all been alive then.

"So what happened?"

Ty opened his mouth, huffed slightly and promptly closed it again.

Zane sat quietly, giving his husband the time and space to figure out how to say what he wanted to say.

"So Becky said you had to choose between me and her," Ty recapped.

"Yeah?"

"And then I started shouting at her to leave," he added.

That wasn't entirely unreasonable, all things considered.

"Uh huh?"

"And then she started crying."

Also not unreasonable.

"Uh huh?"

Ty narrowed his eyes and gave Zane a dirty look that made it clear he was doing this under spousal duress.

"And then we were all out in the middle of the street, trying to stand completely, absolutely still," he finished.

"Trying to stand... okay, and _why_ the hell were we doing that?" Zane asked politely.

Ty made a pained noise.

"So the T-Rex wouldn't see us," he said fatly.

Zane's eyebrows shot up towards his hair.

"So the _T-Rex_ wouldn't see us?" he echoed in disbelief.

"Yes, Zane. The giant, hungry, rampaging T-Rex," Ty shot back. "For some reason, my brain decided to end a horrible dream by turning Baltimore into Jurassic Park."

Zane snorted loudly, trying to imagine a giant, hungry, rampaging T-Rex stomping around the Inner Harbour, chasing a tiny, angry, cursing Ty.

"It's not as if your dreams ever make any sense either," Ty protested.

"You're right, doll, they don't," Zane acknowledged, "but I don't think I've ever dreamed about being chased by a T-Rex."

"It's all my mom's fault," Ty complained. "She let me watch _Mothra vs. Godzilla_ when I was six. Ever since then, I've had this recurring dream about a giant, rampaging dinosaur. Usually a T-Rex, but sometimes it's a Triceratops. One time, it actually _was_ Godzilla. And the dream is always horrible, because I can _never_ run, and I can _never_ find anywhere to hide."

Zane was fairly sure Triceratops was a herbivorous species. But this _was_ Ty's dream brain they were talking about here, so not much room for logic and facts.

"Did you manage to stay still long enough to hide from the T-Rex?" he enquired cautiously.

"No, Zane, I didn't. I had to move my legs, so the damn thing saw me."

Zane rolled his eyes and shook his head. Only Ty could suffer from restless legs in a dream as well as in real life.

"So what happened?"

"Well, what do you think happened?" Ty shot back in an indignant tone. "The T-Rex ate me!"

"I... could see how that would be extremely distressing," Zane observed mildly.

"Lone Star, you seriously have _no_ idea," Ty replied, shuddering slightly.

"A nasty end to a nasty dream."

Ty's indignation deflated as he remembered what had started the conversation.

"Yeah, it was."

Zane pushed himself out of the chair, wincing as his bones creaked in protest, then held out his hand to his other half.

"C'mon, doll. Let's go back to bed now," he suggested, nodding towards the stairs. "If you ask nicely, I might even tuck you in."

Ty sighed, scooped Cricket out of his lap, laid her carefully over his shoulder, then grabbed the extended hand and allowed Zane to haul him up from the couch.

Zane pulled Ty towards him and brushed a kiss across his lips.

"Remind me again, what you told me when we got married," he whispered, nuzzling Ty's cheek with his nose.

"I said I would never leave you alone in the dark," Ty murmured back as he slipped his free hand around Zane's waist.

"And I said I would love you until I die," Zane reminded him.

"I think I remember that bit as well, yeah."

"And I meant it, Ty. With every ounce of my soul," he vowed. "I'm not going anywhere, except with or for you."

"I know, Zane. Me neither."

Zane pulled back far enough to look his husband straight in the eye. "On one condition," he warned.

"What?" Ty demanded, tensing slightly.

"Could you _please_ just do your best to die of old age in your bed?" Zane proposed.

"And _not_ being eaten by a T-Rex?"


End file.
